


Bygones Principle

by idiotbrothers



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Eliot as a mediator, Implied/Referenced Sexual Harassment, M/M, Mutual Pining, Polyamorous Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 21:47:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14627693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idiotbrothers/pseuds/idiotbrothers
Summary: Sequel toSunk Cost Fallacy. Eliot returns the favor.





	Bygones Principle

**Author's Note:**

> Just felt like giving this story a happy ending. Posted as a separate work so you can choose whether or not to read them as part of the same series.

As good of a job as Penny had been doing of avoiding Quentin and Eliot, there were some events that even he couldn’t wriggle out of. Like Alice’s birthday party, which Margo had vehemently insisted on throwing despite Alice’s general apathy towards social gatherings as a whole.

Alice had gotten completely wasted despite herself, mainly because Margo had clung to her side all night, ready with a drink refill at every moment. Penny watched them hanging off of each other, giggling hysterically and playing with illusion magic. The slight smile on his face dropped right off when he sensed Quentin approaching.

“Ugh,” he said inadvertently as Quentin entered his line of sight, briefly considering Traveling away.

“Glad to see you too,” Quentin said, a flash of hurt crossing his face before he neutralized his expression. Didn’t matter. Penny could hear the insecurity and dejection coiling through his mind; his wards were shittier than ever.

“What do you want?” Penny didn’t particularly feel like stressing himself out over Quentin fucking Coldwater tonight. Or any night, really.

Quentin winced. “Nothing, I. I just wanted to say hi. You’ve been. Distant.” He bit his lip anxiously, and Penny observed the gesture with the same sort of clinical detachment that he regarded most things Quentin did these days.

“We’re not friends, Coldwater. Never have been.” There wasn’t any animosity in his voice, more long-suffering patience than anything, but still, Quentin winced again. A shock bloomed in his mind like he’d been slapped.

“Right. No, I’m. Just making sure...just want to know that you’re okay.” His eyes were huge, shining in the low light.

“I’ve been wondering that myself,” Eliot’s voice cut in suddenly, and Penny turned to him, starting to get irritated. “Great,” he said under his breath. Just what he needed.

Eliot took one look at the tension on Quentin’s face and ran his fingers through Quentin’s hair, touching his thumb to his cheek for just a second in what was meant to be a soothing gesture. Quentin was easy to please. Affection and gratefulness suffused his brain like a warm cloud before the ever-present negativity could slink back in. Penny’s stomach hurt. Must have been the caviar Margo had forced on him earlier.

“Hey,” Eliot said, addressing Penny, “Are you giving us the silent treatment?” Penny grunted incomprehensibly. “Jesus,” Eliot said, “and I thought I was emotionally repressed.”

Penny shook his head. “Just leave me alone, man. You never paid me much attention before; why start now?” Eliot gave him an unsympathetic look. He touched Quentin’s elbow. “Q, would you mind grabbing us some food? I’m famished.” They locked eyes for a moment, communicating something to each other that wasn’t easy for Penny to read, and then Quentin nodded silently and walked off.

“So,” Eliot said, after they’d both watched Quentin disappear around a corner, “Cut the bullshit, mind-reader.” Eliot weakened his mental wards just long enough to think, _I know how you feel about him_ , before he instantly built them back up.

Penny’s heart skipped a beat. “You don’t know shit,” Penny said mildly, though his palms had begun to feel a bit damp. Eliot had this intense, all-knowing way about him sometimes.

“Oh, don’t I,” Eliot said incredulously. He reached out to grip Penny’s shoulder and stared him right in the face, eyes blazing. Penny’s throat went dry.

“Penny,” Eliot murmured, “I’m not stupid.”

Penny tried to work up a retort, his mind stuttering like an old car engine, when his dilemma was interrupted by the clear sound of Quentin’s mental distress. Penny whirled around, breaking his and Eliot’s contact.

“Don’t you dare,” Eliot started, but Penny waved him off frantically. “Later,” Penny barked, darting into the crowd of partygoers without a second thought. He homed in on the beacon of Quentin’s harried, anxious thoughts, sharp and painful. Shoving strangers out of the way carelessly, he found Quentin by the refreshments table, cowering as some plastered jackass put his hands all over him.

Blinded by rage, Penny directed a knife-edged burst of thought-obscuring magic at the guy, making him stumble backwards, confusion twisting his drunken expression. Penny went up to him and pushed him bodily away from Quentin, seething. “Get the fuck outta here,” he said, low and threatening. The guy complied, fear seeping through the cloudiness in his eyes before he turned and made a swift, ungraceful exit.

Penny took a moment to wrestle with the anger pulsing through him, then locked eyes with Quentin. “What’d he do to you?” His voice was quiet and as calm as he could manage, but he felt Quentin shrink away from it regardless.

“Nothing,” Quentin squeaked. Flashes of what had happened before Penny got there, of the strange guy’s hands fondling him out of nowhere, of him using his superior strength to cage Quentin in and keep him from escaping, ran through Quentin’s mind on loop. Penny scowled, his heartbeat thundering in his ears. “I’ll fucking kill him,” he muttered, but no sooner had he said it than Quentin’s hand whipped out to grab his own.

“Penny, don’t,” Quentin said imploringly, shaking his head. “It was my fault.”

_Like hell it was_ , Penny thought. What he actually said was, “You should’ve blasted him within an inch of his life the second he touched you.”

Quentin frowned. “It all happened really fast. And that would’ve been incredibly dangerous, so- "

He swallowed the rest of his sentence as Eliot showed up, annoyance written all over him. “What’s going on?” He asked, huffing an impatient breath. “Penny just ran off all of a sudden like he was having a Pavlovian response to something.”

He then seemed to notice the hurt and defensiveness on Quentin’s face and the undiluted anger on Penny’s, because he did a double take. “Okay, wait...What did I just walk into?”

Penny glared at him. “Me realizing that Coldwater has no self-preservation instincts whatsoever, that’s what.”

Quentin made a sound that could almost be characterized as a squawk. “Fuck _you_ , dude. What was I supposed to do in the split second it took me to register that he was- "

Eliot interjected. “ _Who_ was? What happened? If one of you doesn't fill me in _right this second_...”

Penny finally ripped his eyes away from Quentin. “Some worthless drunk decided it’d be a good idea to grope him,” he spat, jabbing a finger at Quentin, “and he just let him do it. Who knows how fuckin’ long he stood there like that before I showed up.” 

“It was literally like, a minute,” Quentin snarled, “And if we’re pointing fingers, why didn’t you just Travel over here if you were so desperate to play the hero? I know you’re plugged into my brain 24/7 like a _fucking stalker_ , so what’s your excuse for that one?”

Penny seethed even harder at that, gritted his teeth with such force that he wouldn’t have been surprised to feel them crack. “You stupid sack of shit,” he growled, “that’s not how it works. I need a specific location. You should know this by now, but clearly it’s just in one ear, out the other with you. Fucking oblivious, self-centered, air-headed little- "

Before he could finish that sentence, Eliot knocked their skulls together abruptly, the pain making them both erupt into shocked profanities, Penny raising a hand to his forehead and screwing his eyes shut. When he opened them, Eliot had stepped between the two of them and was leveling each of them with a stony stare.

“Let’s not do this here,” he said, the falsely pleasant tone of his voice making Penny shiver. For the first time, he noticed that a crowd of onlookers had grown around them, most of them lilting a bit, inebriated, but somehow still hawkishly attentive. Penny immediately grabbed Eliot and Quentin by the arms and Traveled them up to Quentin’s bedroom.

“Now,” Eliot said, before they’d even gotten their bearings, “Where were we?”

Penny was fully prepared to launch back into a heated rant, but before he could, Quentin said, “I’m sorry.” He looked right at Eliot as he said it, which made something deep inside Penny want to shrivel up and die.

Even Eliot looked taken aback. “What for, darling?”

Quentin swallowed, rubbing at the red mark on his forehead. “You know, for. For not...defending myself. I just, I’d never, I had no idea what to- "

Eliot shushed him gently, cupping his face with his big hands and kissing his hair. “I know how you must’ve felt. I’m just glad it was Penny who got to you when he did, because if it were me...”

Quentin couldn’t see, but Eliot’s eyes darkened as he trailed off, and his meticulously crafted wards wavered involuntarily, significantly enough that Penny caught a glimpse of the violent punishment that Eliot felt Quentin’s harasser deserved. The gruesome, jarring images abated in a second, and Penny was left standing there in awe, the remnants of his anger draining away.

Quentin lifted his head to stare at Eliot questioningly. “Don’t worry about it,” Eliot said, pressing a firm kiss to his lips. As brief and dismissive as it was, it still prodded at the green-eyed beast in Penny’s chest, his breath catching and his stomach turning. When Eliot looked at him, he wondered how much of it was showing on his face.

“For fuck’s sake,” Eliot said, almost to himself. “I’ve had enough of this goddamn pity party. Hey, Q,” he lifted Quentin’s chin with his finger. “Penny likes you. A lot.”

Penny nearly had a heart attack. “What the _flying fuck_ are you saying to him- "

Eliot talked over him. “And you,” he said, matter-of-factly, “Quentin likes you too. Just as much, if not more. It’s mutual, so you can put an end to this miserable, counterproductive circle-jerk. Have at it already.”

Penny stared. He was kind of having a hard time grounding himself in reality. What Eliot said, that...that couldn’t be right. Could it? In what world would Quentin ever be able to...

Distantly, he heard Eliot groan with frustration. “You’re absolutely useless.” Penny supposed that was directed at him, because he was still frozen, and Quentin was moving, asking Eliot something that Penny didn’t quite catch, and then Quentin was touching Penny’s shoulder tentatively.

He looked up at Penny shyly, and Penny was possibly burning up a bit, something icy hot shooting through him as Quentin’s eyes met his. 

“Hi,” Quentin said, his voice rough. “This is weird, but...” He fitted his hands over Penny’s waist, started to stand on his toes. Penny was falling apart on the inside, couldn’t do anything but breathe and let his eyes fall slowly shut in anticipation.

When Quentin finally kissed him, something exploded through the rigid fear in Penny’s mind and he returned the kiss in a burst of movement, his hand coming up to cradle the back of Quentin’s head, fingers tangling in his hair. Never breaking the kiss, he walked Quentin backwards until they reached the edge of the bed, and toppled Quentin into it unceremoniously, one hand tugging at Quentin’s hair as the other traced over his jawline, their kiss turning frantic and hot, all tongue and teeth and...and...

“Eliot,” Penny gasped, pulling away from Quentin’s mouth in a Herculean show of self-restraint. “He’s, where did he- "

Eliot was nowhere to be found when Penny looked around the room, panicked. Quentin touched his cheek, drawing his attention back to him. “It’s okay,” he said softly. “I’m polyamorous. Do you know what that- "

“Of fucking course I do,” Penny said, though there was no real heat to it. He grinned salaciously. “Gettin’ real tired of you patronizing me, Coldwater.”

Quentin quirked an eyebrow, as if to say, _What’re you gonna do about it?_

Penny reached down to palm Quentin’s cock through his pants, making him let out an extremely needy keening noise that Penny decided he needed to hear again.

“Strip,” Penny said in Quentin’s ear, yanking at the hem of his shirt demonstrably, then trailing impatient kisses down his neck as Quentin struggled to get his clothes off while quivering like a leaf in the wind.

At Quentin’s first _God, fuck me_ , Penny practically had an out of body experience, buzzing with lust and relief because of how ridiculously desperate he was to do just that.

* * *

 

They had a hard time looking at each other when they met with their study group the next morning.

Eliot just smirked knowingly at them and ruffled Quentin’s hair, whispering, “It’s about damn time”. Quentin blushed bright red and Penny told himself he didn’t find it incredibly endearing.

After the study session was done- Penny having retained literally nothing from it because of how distracted he was the whole time, fixated on Quentin’s hair and his hands and the way he furrowed his brow and chewed on his bottom lip when he concentrated, et cetera et cetera- Penny started to collect his neglected books.

He jumped out of his skin when Quentin said his name, impossibly worried for a second that he’d been able to hear his thoughts.

“What,” he said, defensive. Quentin’s mouth turned down, and Penny mentally kicked himself. “No, sorry, I’m. Just thinking. Sorry,” Penny hazarded awkwardly, reaching a hand out as if to touch Quentin, but dropping it after a second. “What is it?”

Quentin brushed a lock of hair out of his face, clearing his throat. “Um. Eliot and I were- You- We could all... _Doyouwannagotolunchwithus_?”

Penny blinked. “Come again?”

Quentin blushed for the second time that day, and Penny kind of _really_ wanted to kiss him.

Quentin stuttered some more. “You, me, Eliot. Lunch. Now?”

Penny looked up to where Eliot was perched on a table a good distance behind Quentin, callously smoking a cigarette amongst the stacks of books. He waved jauntily at Penny when he noticed him looking.

Penny suppressed a laugh, glanced back at Quentin. “Sure,” he said, keeping his voice carefully impassive. “I’ve got nothing better to do.”

Quentin brightened, smiling up at him with such unencumbered delight that Penny punched him in the shoulder. 

“Ow! Why- "

“Close your mind, fucker,” Penny said lightly, pushing past him and going over to join Eliot. Quentin scrambled to keep up with him, muttering expletives all the while, and Penny smiled like he hadn’t in a long time, not even caring when Eliot made fun of him for it. 

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea if this is any good...I wrote it pretty much all at once and as I mentioned in my previous fic, I haven't written in ages. Apparently getting back into it though. :)


End file.
